Friday, April 5th, 2024 at 9:42 am
Forgive me, a sinner. “God forgives, and I forgive”.
And thus we begin our Lenten journey in the Eastern Orthodox faith. At the end of our Sunday liturgy, we ask forgiveness of each member of our congregation and they mutually ask forgiveness from us. It’s a humbling and emotional time, one that’s been discussed in the homely by our priest, Father Methodios, as one of the pillars of our Lenten journey.
We’re familiar with fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as three of the struggles we’ll have over the next 40-plus days, but this year Father Methodios wants us to especially concentrate on forgiveness. Something not easy to do in this crazy world today. The gospel reading is from St. Matthew (6:14—21), where Jesus tells his disciples you must forgive others or you will not be forgiven. They’re reminded to fast privately and not make a big deal about eliminating meat, fish, dairy, eggs, wine, and oil for most of the journey. And we’re reminded to give alms by remembering that we shouldn’t worry about laying up treasure in this life…or treasure is in heaven.
Father Josiah Trenham gave an amazing reflection on forgiveness and loving one’s neighbor just recently that drives forgiveness home. Intitled HATRED, he reflects on how easy it is in this world to hate people rather than sin. We can certainly hate the harm someone does, for example, to little children or innocent people, but we should be careful that that hatred doesn’t carry over to the person committing the crime. After all, we’re all made in the image and likeness of God, Genesis 1:26-27, and nothing God creates is worthy of hate. Read the rest of this entry
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
Monday, June 28th, 2021 at 5:01 pm
CHAPTER FIVE—21ST CENTURY
It’s funny how easy it was to fly from Las Vegas to Tucson in just a short two hours from my door to the limo—of course when you had money. No security, no ticketing, no hassles, I didn’t even have to leave my pistol behind. Since 9/11 air travel had really become a pain. I’d forgotten how much I liked traveling on a private plane.
“So where we headed Nigel”? I asked.
“About an hour’s drive sir,” he replied as the privacy screen rose between us, “Please help yourself to refreshments.”
I looked around the back seat and found the minibar stocked with wine, champagne, brandy, whisky, and scotch—an alcoholic’s dream come true.
“Fresh ice, these guys didn’t miss a beat,” I mumbled to myself. This limo had to be sitting at the terminal for at least three hours. Three hours in the desert and they still had fresh ice. Those executive terminal folks were great, and Staan was one class act.
Zeroing in on the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch I decided to forego the ice and go neat for my first taste of this very expensive liquor. Read the rest of this entry
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
Friday, April 30th, 2021 at 8:17 am
Crossroad In Time is now live on its own page at:
Crossroad In Time – A Novel by Keith Shafer
Click on the link or go to the menu page for the first chapter of Crossroad In Time
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
Wednesday, March 31st, 2021 at 12:05 pm
Crossroad In Time
Crossroad In Time
Many years ago I took an adult-education class at our local community college on novel writing. Like most writers, I’d had an idea running around in my head for some time and I used that idea in the class. Below is the chapter I wrote for that class. It was just an introduction to our work and style but was well received by the instructor.
I went on to write and re-write the novel over several years and then it sat. I’m not sure why, but now seems like a good time to finally introduce it to the world at large. Maybe it’s because of the nature of society today and the fact that we seem to be so divided and hopeless. Perhaps this feeble attempt to write a story will brighten someone’s life and, God willing, help us all to remember to “Love your neighbor as yourself”. God Bless. Read the rest of this entry
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
Friday, February 22nd, 2019 at 9:24 am
Texas Bluebonnet
Wow! Has it been almost four months since my last post…my how time DOES fly!
February 2019 is almost in the can and that means we’ve been in Fredericksburg, Texas now about four months…and that’s the longest we’ve been in one place since we went full time in our RV back in early 2017. In those four months a lot has happened.
- We bought a house. Yes, we bought a house and will now base our travels out of Fredericksburg. Since Texas is pretty much in the center of the USA it’ll mean we’re not traveling coast to coast every year. Of course that means more time to stop and smell the Bluebonnets!
- We’ve gotten involved. Ilene’s joined the local Native Plant Society of Texas, I’ve joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Ex-military Flyers, and we’ve found a wonderful church to attend, St Thomas Antiochian Orthodox Church.
- We’re staying busy. We’ve both attended local classes on fly fishing, gardening, egg tempera painting, and Texas forensic archeology. Later this month we’re also looking at volunteering at a local historical site, helping to start a local flying club, and I just attended my first Urban Sketcher outing as part of the Die Kunstler von Fredericksburg group. Read the rest of this entry
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
Monday, December 28th, 2015 at 12:05 am
Happy New Year!—Well, it is a bit early but just the same, I thought I’d take a moment and just throw down a challenge to my readers this week. Since 2016 is just around the corner, I’d like to know what are your writing goals for the coming year?
Writers Challenge # 1: Do you have a book, novel, short story you plan to publish? Announce your work to the world. Stop by either here at the blog or on my Twitter account and let us know when it’s out so we can pass along the good news!
My book, Crossroad in Time will be published early this year. I’ll let you know when it comes out. Read the rest of this entry
Wednesday, October 14th, 2015 at 12:48 pm
Hello, and welcome to my new website. My name is Keith G. Shafer and I’m an author and voice talent. Please bear with me a bit as I update and “tweak” my new site. Over the next couple weeks I’ll be adding a blog, an about page, and a few more items of interest to my readers, friends, and fellow writers.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you again.
KgS
Friday, January 16th, 2015 at 11:41 pm
Pardon My Dust
So, I’ve had this domain name, keithshafer.com, for about three years now and I finally decided to activate it. Working with Hostgator I got a smoking deal to host all of my domains on one server for a great price.
The past week has seen me scrambling to transfer domains from Godaddy.com to Hostgator.com, as well as add my wife’s account to this account, and to top it off, we’re in the process of opening two new stores for the wife’s Amazon FBA business.
Needless to say I’ve been a bit busy. Oh, did I mention I also write three times a week for our Over 50 business blog and once a week for my travel blog. Can you tell I like to write?
Anyway, I wanted to get a short post up so you’re not looking at the typical “Hello World” post for a new WordPress site. It’s a three-day weekend ahead so I should get everything sorted out between now and Tuesday.
Thanks for taking a look at my site and pardon my dust.
Keith
I’m officially retired after over 40 years of working with the US military in one way or another. My bride of 45 years and I settled into a nice home in Fredericksburg, Texas, USA, and are enjoying the many events, organizations, and attractions the Texas Hill Country has to offer. I enjoy urban sketching, watercolor painting, dabble in writing, and do an occasional voice acting gig.
